Security Council: Meetings Coverage

With extreme levels of gang violence continuing to erode state authority in Haiti and no improvement in sight, a senior United Nations official urged Member States to boost their contributions to the acutely under-resourced Multinational Security Support Mission at an open briefing held by the Security Council to discuss a proposal to transform that Support mission — authorized by the 15-member body in 2023 to assist the Haitian National Police — into a UN peacekeeping operation.

With another two vetoes cast this week in the Security Council — one on a cessation of hostilities in Sudan and one on a Gaza ceasefire — the importance of the “veto initiative” is now “even more profound”, the General Assembly heard today.

The Security Council today failed to adopt a text, put forward by its 10 elected members, that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and demanded the release of all hostages, on account of a negative vote cast by a permanent member.

As the Security Council meeting of 18 November concluded, regional delegations, condemning the horrific aggression being wrought upon the Palestinian people by Israel, along with that country’s attacks against Lebanon, urged the 15‑nation organ to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza before famine consumes it and the dangerously escalating violence engulfs the entire Middle East.

In his bi-annual briefing today to the Security Council on the situation in Libya, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) urged Member States’ cooperation in executing arrest warrants against those suspected of war crimes committed in the town of Tarhuna, spotlighting the recent unsealing of arrest warrants for individuals linked to the Al Kaniyat militia, and Libyan authorities’ collaboration to pursue accountability.

Reckoning with recent reports of the deployment of foreign troops and the authorization to use long-range weapons to strike across borders, speakers in the Security Council today discussed how best to achieve peace in Ukraine as civilians there ready themselves to face a third winter under increasingly harsh conditions.

The Security Council, meeting once again amid the 19-month brutal war raging in Sudan that has led to the world’s largest displacement crisis, rejected today a draft resolution intended to bolster measures to protect civilians and increase humanitarian aid access.

“The current conditions are among the worst we’ve seen during the entire war and are not set to improve,” Tor Wennesland, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, warned the Security Council during a meeting on ending the war in Gaza and Lebanon and securing durable peace in the Middle East, as Member States echoed the need for a ceasefire and voiced concern over developments that jeopardize the two-State solution.

The Security Council today decided to extend the mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) until 15 November 2025, mandating it to advance a multi-year strategic vision to create the political, security and institutional conditions conducive to national reconciliation and durable peace.

As the Security Council took up the annual briefing from the chairs of its three counter-terrorism committees today, speakers underscored the urgent need for unity and coordination among the three bodies to strengthen the collective response against terrorist groups whose growing influence and expansion continues to threaten international peace and stability.